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Al Hewetson
– January 6, 2004) Additional WebCitation archive. was a Scottish-Canadian writer and editor of American horror-comics magazines, best known for his work with the 1970s publisher Skywald Publications, where he created what he termed the magazines' "Horror-Mood" sensibility. He went on to become a publisher of city magazines in Canada. Biography Early life and career Al Hewetson was born and initially raised in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of James and Elizabeth Hewetson.Extract Entry of Birth for Alan T. Hewetson (1946). Register Book of Births for the District of Govan in the Burgh of Glasgow. There he read such comic books as Classics Illustrated, The Beano and Eagle before his family migrated to Canada when he was 9 years old, in 1956.Landed Immigrant Status of Elizabeth M. Hewetson (1956). British Passport, Quebec, Canada. At his new home, he began reading the satirical Mad and Humbug magazines, becoming infatuated with the work of writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman. Through his involvement in comics fandom, he began corresponding with such future underground and alternative comics creators as Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Robert Crumb, and Art Spiegelman, and published a single issue of a fanzine, The Potrzebie Annual (no relation to fellow fan Bhob Stewart's Potrzebie). Interview excerpt from Comics Hoping to start a humor magazine with both text articles and comics, he arranged to interview Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stan Lee in New York City, New York. Then, as Hewetson recalled in a 1973 interview, he phoned Lee, "with whom I’d corresponded for about a year, and asked him for a position and within a few weeks I had the position. That’s how I got into writing professionally." Decades later, Hewetson detailed that not long after conducting the interview with Lee, "I received a phone call from production manager Sol Brodsky offering me a job as Stan's assistant for 'six months,' for a comparatively small salary. Stan had liked me, needed an assistant, and was going to 'introduce new guys into the medium who he figured had potential,' is how I think they put it.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 50 His duties included opening and answering fan mail, preparing the letters pages for most of the comics, mailing complete sets of comics to Marvel writers and artists, awarding "No Prizes", and serving as Lee's gofer. He also took the Marvel staff and freelancer photos published in Fantastic Four Annual #7 (cover-dated Nov. 1969). Lee invited him to submit story ideas, but Hewetson's writing style, heavily influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and other 19th-century authors, proved "highly unsuitable for Marvel superheroes", Hewetson said. He remained at his post from February to September 1969, and was succeeded as Lee's assistant by Allyn Brodsky, no relation to Sol Brodsky. The following year, Hewetson and veteran artist Syd Shores responded to DC Comics editorial director Carmine Infantino's desire for new concepts in comics magazines and devised a concept The Satirists was done in 1971, and Dirty Soks and a daily and Sunday Tales of the Macabre ran from 1972 to 1974, according to information Hewetson provided to Jerry Bails and Hames Ware's Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999. Hewetson and Shores did collaborate on Hewetson's one horror story for Marvel, the seven-page "Master and Slave" in Creatures on the Loose #12 (July 1971); this came after he had already begun writing uncredited stories for rival DC Comics and for the satirical magazines Sick and Cracked, and penning his first credited story, the 10-page "4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Blast Off! to a Nightmare!", illustrated by Jack Sparling, in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine Vampirella #3 (Jan. 1970).Al Hewetson at the Grand Comics Database That had come about, he said in 2003, when he was writing an article for Cinema magazine about comic-book characters in film: Skywald Hewetson went on to write a number of stories through mid-1971 issues of Warren's Creepy and Eerie, while also breaking in at the start-up rival Skywald Publications, with "Vault of a Vampire" in Nightmare #3 (April 1971). Skywald was co-founded in 1970 by Sol Brodsky, whom Hewetson knew from Marvel Comics, and who brought freelancer Hewetson in as associate editor; Hewetson's first credit as such appears in Psycho #7 (July 1972). By the following month, Brodsky had returned to Marvel, and Hewetson became Skywald's editor,Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 57 managing editorial from his home in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada. As he described the process, "The Horror-Mood" Soon afterward, Hewetson, both out of personal preference and in an attempt to distinguish Skywald's magazines from those of industry leader Warren, instituted a stylistic theme he called "Horror-Mood", going so far as to receive approval from publisher Israel Waldman to change the company name to Horror-Mood Publishing Corp. — a move nixed by the low-budget company's accountant, who noted there would be legal costs incurred in a name change, which would also potentially confuse distributors.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 55 As Hewetson described the genesis and specifics of the Horror-Mood in 2003, it Hewetson estimates he wrote over 500 published stories for Skywald,Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 47 using such pseudonyms as Joe Dentyn, Stuart Williams, Henry Bergman, Hugh Laskey, Harvey Lazarus and Howie Anderson, as well as Peter Cappiello, Edward Farthing, and Victor Buckley. He also created a public persona, "Archaic Al Hewetson", that would often appear as a mascot, introducing stories.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 43 Hewetson's ongoing "Shoggoth Crusade" feature, which launched with "This Grotesque Green Earth" in Nightmare #15 (Oct. 1973), envisioned himself and other Skywald staffers hunting subterranean supernatural creatures.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 48 Hewetson also wrote the ongoing feature "The Human Gargoyles", which he called "a Kafkaesque parody of religion, horror, society, family life and pop culture" as seen through the experiences of a family of three gargoyles (technically, grotesques) come to life.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 45 Later career and death Toward the end of Skywald's existence — which Hewetson was tasked to officially announce in a March 25, 1975 memo to staffers and others — Hewetson became involved with a movie company in Toronto, Canada.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 65 It is unclear whether this was Quadrant Films, for which Hewetson, post-Skywald, wrote several paid-for but unproduced screenplays. He recalled in 2003, Six to eight months after Skywald ended, and concurrent with his Quadrant screenwriting, Hewetson began publishing a city magazine for St. Catharines, Ontario, and neighboring Niagara Falls, Ontario. He successfully expanded to city magazines in Buffalo, New York, and Windsor, Ontario, the latter called Greater Windsor. By 2003, he and artist Pablo Marcos, a Skywald compatriot, were working on two graphic novels: Labyrinth Street, a horror anthology series set in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Suko: Samurai Time Warrior. With another Skywald artist, Maelo Cintron, he was planning to create a modern-day Western series, Gargoyle Justice, starring the grownup "Human Gargoyles" child, Andrew Sartyros, as a U.S. Marshal. Personal life Hewetson married Julie C. Williams in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1968.Certificate of Marriage for Alan T. Hewetson and Julie C. Williams (1968). Sudbury, Ontario. The couple had a daughter, Wendy, born in 1976 in Welland, Ontario.Statement of Live Birth for Wendy A. Hewetson (1976). Ontario Office of the Registrar General. Hewetson and Williams divorced in 1991 in Windsor, Ontario.Certificate of Divorce for Alan T. Hewetson and Julie C. Hewetson (1991). Ontario Court (General Division). From the early 1990s until the time of his death, Al Hewetson was in a common law relationship with Michelle Lemieux in Windsor.Hewetson, Comic Book Artist, p. 71 (image and caption)Certificate of Death for Alan T. Hewetson (2004). Windsor Chapel Funeral Home Limited. Following the 1982 death of Canadian artist and Skywald contributor Gene Day, rumors circulated for years that Hewetson was dead, which Hewetson attributed to "the word spreading that 'the young Canadian who used to do Skywald is dead.'" Hewetson survived a heart attack and stroke in 2001, then died unexpectedly on January 6, 2004, shortly after finishing work on the book Skywald!: The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood (Headpress/Critical Vision, 2004). References Further reading *''Comic Book Marketplace'' #55 (January 1998 ) *''The Comics Journal'' #127 (February 1989) | Notes = | Trivia = | OfficialWebsite = | Links = }}